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Cory Booker slams Trump's 'all-out assault' on LGBTQ Americans

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NBC OUT

Cory Booker slams Trump's 'all-out assault' on LGBTQ Americans

by Mary Emily O'Hara / Dec.11.2017 / 10:38 PM ET

"This administration has put forth an all-out assault on the LGBTQ community," Sen. Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, said of the Trump administration's approach to policies impacting LGBTQ Americans.

In an exclusive video sent to NBC Out, Booker took aim at President Donald Trump for his attempt to ban transgender people from serving in the military and his administration's position on the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission Supreme Court case.

Booker called Trump's trans military ban, which has been ruled against by two federal judges, "outrageous" and said transgender people in the armed forces are "qualified folks who've already shown a record of service that is incredible, that is worthy of respect."

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Asked about the Masterpiece Cakeshop case that was argued before the Supreme Court last Tuesday -- in which a Colorado baker claims that his faith should give him a legal exemption from having to follow his state's anti-discrimination civil rights law -- Booker expressed hope that the nation's top court would rule in favor of the gay couple that filed a discrimination complaint in the case.

"There's many of us that are hoping the Supreme Court -- like it did with marriage equality, like it's done in discrimination cases facing African-Americans in the past -- will do the right thing," said Booker, noting that he attended Tuesday's oral arguments.

The Trump administration has backed the baker, Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, David Mullins and Charlie Craig, due to his Christian beliefs.

Booker spent the weekend in Alabama stumping for U.S. Senate candidate Doug Jones, a Democrat famously facing down Republican Roy Moore, a Trump favorite who has been accused of sexual misconduct and has called for homosexuality to be made illegal. Booker also has ancestral roots in the state, the details of which were revealed in an episode of Henry Louis Gates' PBS series "Finding Your Roots."

"My family has stories about the difficulties of driving across country and finding a place that would let black people use bathrooms, or eat," Booker said. The senator compared his own family's struggles against racism in the South to the issue at the heart of the Masterpiece Bakeshop case -- whether or not a business should be legally allowed to turn customers away because of faith-based discrimination.